10 of 30 - VI - Beekeeping

[aggienaut]

   People often ask me what exactly beekeepers do. Similarly, I often find myself doing things and thinking "I bet people don't think of beekeepers doing THIS"

   Yesterday was such a day, as Dave and I spent the day clearing underbrush in a meadow to prepare to put beehives there. So I was spending my time raking the bajeezes out of the area.
   In so doing we upset a nest of these giant ants, which proceeded to try to eat us. So we got the any poison and carpet bombed that corner. Ants are more than just a nuisance -- they sneak into hives and steal the honey. We've had numerous hives fail due to ant robbery.
   Hobbyists usually put their hives on stilts with ant poison around the base of the stilts (or the stilts actually sitting in cups of oil), but on a large scale putting hives on stilts isn't practical. So we are constantly battling ants.

   The other day I ordered some 150 hive boxes, which should arrive tomorrow or the next day. They are assembled, but not painted, so this means that I'll probably spend at least a day painting hives.

   And then there's the miscelleneous things such as ordering equipment, assembling equipment, cleaning equipment. I think I spend as much time not working directly with bees as I do working with them.
   The hives are all pretty full of honey though right now, so I'm optimistic we'll be doing a honey harvest before too long. That will entail numerous steps which I will no doubt document at the time.

   But in the mean time, we recently established two new bee yards up in the forested hills at around 2,500 ft, and the one I was clearing yesterday will make a third. The area is so beautiful I would love to go camping right there were the bees are. It's going to be a great place to work (and is so lush, it's going to be a great place for the BEES to work).

   Here is a picture of one of the yards up there:



(I took this as soon as we arrived at this yard -- we don't know why that one in the foreground was off kilter, but I'm blaming chupacabra)

Comments

Lines

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

The lines stay put. No noticeable dust that I ever saw.

And it keeps away ghosts, too (cf some Tim Powers novel or another)!




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Re: Lines

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Oh, in only barely related news -- you had mentioned a bit ago thinking about getting a hive. I think you should do it. Yes "colony collapse disorder" is still going on, but it only occurs in winter and isn't as bad as the media makes it out to be ... appx 32% of hives have been lost to it every winter, which is bad, but that still means you're more likely than not not to be effected. And if you have two hives there's a 90% chance at least one will survive (:

Re: Lines

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

You don't think the swelling and inflexibility of the hand from one sting (that I mentioned in another comment on your blog somewhere) is something to be concerned about, then? I am confident of my ability to deal with any amount of beesting level pain, less confident of my ability to deal with anaphylactic shock.

Should I just go get deliberately stung a few times to build up an immunity or what?


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Re: Lines

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that. Well, the good news is you don't appear to be one of the 2% of americans who goes into life threatening anaphylactic shock after one sting -- but you might be allergic to them on a lower level.

BUT it sounds like you won't die from a sting so, yes, actually, I would recommend getting a few more one at a time and seeing what happens. The way it was explained to me is that every time you get fewer stings than a certain allergic typing tipping point you build up tolerance, but every time you get MORE stings than that point your tolerance goes down (your body decides to overreact more). I believe that typing tipping point is where you have a really bad reaction, which hopefully your body isn't counting the swollen hand as. As such, if you were to get a stings a few more times hopefully your reaction will go down. If your reaction seems to be getting worse though it would probably be best to call it quits on the little experiment.